Move 6. Conditional Move Thread

It's a little early in the voting to declare 5... d5 the vote winner, but I figured early discussion is best and 75% for 5... d5 with ~200 votes in at the time I created this is a good majority.

The most popular moves for white are:

6. Nf3 (by far)

6. a3

6. Nge2

6. cxd5

Assuming he plays Nf3, I like 6... b6. I'll provide more in depth reasoning tomorrow (it's late right now... you dont want my incoherent late night ramblings). While it will be one of the larger uphill tasks trying to convince a crowd to go with a move that is a 10:1 underdog going by database play tallies, it may be a fun experiment to try (to me at least).

While those who commented seem to be in agreement, to clarify the point about the twin bishops, my point about the losing the bishop pair (in the previous move's forum), and I think LaskerFan's also is not that losing the bishop pair is instantly bad for black, and the nimzo is a bad opening. It is that white is making moves to specifically lessen the weaknesses imposed by capturing the knight, and maximizing his long term chances by improving the position so that his minor pieces are better than ours. Again, this doesn't mean the much more popular 6... c5 is busted. Obviously a lot of this has to do with playing style, and situational differences.

That is why I support b6, not only because I feel it will give us a better position to work with, but it causes white to have to reevaluate the plan a bit; making things a little more complicated for him (I know not by much, and I know in general he will be able to deal with complications better than we can, but I think it will still help).

Now the trick is going to be to get enough support for the move in the general forum.

Why did we play the Nimzo-Indian if we dont want to lose our King Bishop? The Nimzo-Indian is a plan to gain control of e4 by trading White's Queen's Knight in conjunction with the 'Indian' fianchetto of the Queen's Bishop...

TheRealDeal95 - While it is good to understand the main points of an opening, chess is also dynamic. Ideally, each position should be looked at without regard to what was played before it. We are trying to discuss if in this position with this opponent, maintaining the bishop and going with a different strategy would be best.

Regarding, move choice, I assume you are a fan of c5 if 6. Nf3, do you mind adding some reasons, since this forum is a little lacking of support for it (even though it is the main line move)?

Well 6... c5 is the main line, striking at the center and getting ready for the Queen Knight to get out. Now there is also a situation with these four pawns (d4, c4, d5 and c5) where White or Black sometimes will get an isolated pawn, which is known as a weakness. The main line continues:

7. O-O Nf6, getting another attacker on the center...

8. a3 Bxc4

9. bxc3 dxc4, this forces white to waste some time but black gives up some control on e4...

10. Bxc4, and we have a good game 

I too support b6 the most. Everywhere you look at the chess.com fora and articles, you hear about correspondence games that are a hard nut to crack when attacking because there are so many resources to use when defending. So we can go ahead and try to follow the main line in which we know we'll trade off our bishop. Or we can try to hold on to one of the most important resources in chess to defend with or even (counter-)attack with: the bishop pair.

Also I don't think it's a bad thing to leave (the best known) theory because it could lead to tactics, if we get into a position where there's a combo after which we're better than before, it might be obvious enough to convince ALL of the players. I don't think anyone might be influential enough (no offence lasker and valentin :P) to convince a big enough group turn after turn to make positional benificial moves one after another. Just think of them as a group of children in class: when you first learned chess as a kid, what did you like to do: try an obvious combination and try to make the best of it after the storm you unleashed went down, or try to twist your opponent's balls a bit at a time?

IMHO, it is perfectly reasonable to retreat the bishop in several lines of the Nimzo, especially where black has played d5. The pin has achieved the objective of getting white to block in the queen's bishop.